July 5, 2011

My Journey To See New Edition at Essence Music Fest 2011..

If you graduated high school in the 80's make some noise! lol.

That's how they introduced New Edition. The 80's class and beyond was representing DEEP on the last night of the Essence Music Festival (class of '89 right here!) and I felt like I was amongst my peers, you know, people who know the words to New Edition's throwback jam "Is This The End" and Doug E. Fresh's "The Show" I just thought the whole throwback vibe of the night was lovely.

New Edition opened the show with "If It Isn't Love"

I haven't been to an Essence Music Festival in New Orleans since Luther Vandross closed out one of the nights, and Luther passed in 2005, so it had to be before then. And to be honest, we weren't going this year either until I found out completely by accident that New Edition was reuniting at this year's Essence (!?!?!) How in the freakin' world did I miss that???

Rewind to Saturday, July 2, 2011, Day 2 of Essence Fest and picture us scrambling for tickets AND a hotel room at the 11th hour just so I wouldn't miss New Edition on Saturday Day 2 of Essence. Then fast forward to us scoring tickets to Saturday Day 2 of Essence! Woo! Only problem was New Edition wasn't performing until Sunday DAY 3 of Essence. You have got to be kidding me. smh :( Leave it to me to mix up the dates. But my husband wanted to see Kanye, and I enjoyed Chaka Khan and Jill Scott (Day 2) so those tickets still worked out.

*Slideshow*

So now we're scrambling for a second night at our hotel in a city that is already booked solid for this huge annual music fest. AND on top of that, we still needed tickets for Day 3. Well long story short, and a happy ending, we scored Day 3 Essence Fest tickets on Day 2 before we even set foot in the Superdome. Floor seats! For NEW EDITION! WINNING!!! Overall we enjoyed our first year back at Essence since I don't know when. So much so, that I'll be paying closer attention to next year, and the year after that. Trust.

"Can You Stand the Rain" and "When Will I See You Smile Again" (below) went hard when they did it at Essence.And I know you can hardly tell, but I really heart me some New Edition.